site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Depends on the theory and what you mean by 'contradict'.

For theories about simple systems with a small number of axioms and moving parts, where the predictions of a model are very binary and precise, yes, it's easy to heavily contradict a theory. Put two spheres of a certain mass a certain distance form each other in an endless void, and your theory of gravity will very precisely state how quickly they should move towards each other; observe anything other than that, and with a complete absence of plausible alternative explanations for the observation, you've got a very strong update against your theory.

But in much more complex systems with millions of moving parts and interacting effects, such as a person or a society or an economy or etc., models tend to make much broader and more stochastic predictions, and there tend to be lots more plausible explanations for divergences from those predictions. And thus the updates from both affirming and 'contradictory' evidence tend to be much weaker, and more symmetric.

Of course, that's why a lot of people tend to get frustrated about studies of complex systems, and call that all 'soft science' and sneer at it. but this always seems like a type of cowardice to me; yes, studying those systems is a lot more difficult, but that doesn't mean that truths don't exist or can't ever be found, and they are often very very very important!